Advance Cd/Advance Mame

[TheMadMechanic]

Hi this newbie need some help decided to post here instead of the advance CD forums

So decided to try advance CD to get Mame running on an old IBM thinkpad 390x.
I used advanced 2.6.2. Well I followed the instructions.. roms files checked out. Created the iso image and burned the advcd.iso to cd. 

Advance mame loads and after I select to play polyplay or robbie I get these error messages:

                 error setting the variable mode information.
                 unable to start video emulation
                 error process exited with status 1.

1. How do I fix this?
2. How do I get out to the shell in advance mame?
Please please help!!!


FYI: A little history on how I got to this point 6 mths (on/off) in the making.
Got my bartop cab designed and the controls designed (been in the designing process for the last 2 yrs I had originally wanted to go with a cocktail cab but then decided on a bartop - hence the two years). I only need to get my blasted laptop working with mame. Since I decided I did not like windows I would try Linux. Well here I am as a last ditch effort to get help in this wonderful community. I been a lurker for a few years enjoying the posts!!!

So if I cannot get linux working with mame I am throwing the towel in and going with win95 ..yes I said win 95 or win 98 on my old thinkpad 390x with mame32. At least I know this works.
 

[tikbalang]

1. advanceCD was not meant for lcd screens but you can try the settings for pc crt VGA (31.5khz) in advcfg.exe. your video card maybe unsupported. downgrade to something older, it will not affect performance since video procsessing is done at cpu level.

2. Alt + F? (F1 to F4)

you can also try other livecd's posted in the linux sub-forum. search for lincade, piapara, zxmame.

[TheMadMechanic]

"downgrade to something older"

what should I downgrade too? please explain.

I will check out the other suggestions.

Thanks!!!

MM

[tikbalang]

"downgrade to something older"

what should I downgrade too? please explain.

i was suggesting you downgrade your video card.

[Faxanadu]

Advance Mame might not be the best choice for a laptop. I have just spent a couple weeks getting it to run properly for an arcade monitor. I had to go threw several different old, generic video cards to find the right balance for the LFB (Linux Frame Buffer) device it apparently uses for video. I also had several problems with AdvMenu locking the machine up for some odd reason. I'm guessing you are launching the games from the AdvMenu that starts when you boot the AdvCD. Try adding the file advcd.rc in the "arcade" directory before compile the ISO. In this file put a line that says "run advmenu" without the ". This will force the cd to run advmenu without whatever default config they apparently used. This solved the game lockup problem for me. Remember to create the advcd.rc file IN LINUX. Otherwise, the file will be in an ms-dos format that the system can't parse correctly. If you have to, create the advcd.rc file in linux and put it on a usb key or something, switch back over to windows and copy the file into the arcade directory then create the ISO. If you need to I can just email you the advcd.rc file.